A Blog on Your Website – Why You Should Have One

The whole idea of owning a website is to put information out so that people can actually find and read it. Most people would think that just because someone had a ‘great’ idea or story to tell and if they put it on a web page the whole world would be awed. Admittedly, it might be extremely rare, but it might happen for those with truly innovative ideas or the most scandalous news.

Having a blog on a website gives the site a multi-pronged attacking advantage when it comes to online exposure. 1 A few examples:

- The nature of a blog is that it is constantly changing as post after post is updated. Search engines love websites with content that changes regularly, in their ‘eyes’ this means that the site is cared for and can be relied on to provide up-to-date information. This alone is a major booster of search engine rankings. 2

- A website that has a blog that is related to the goods and services that are provided by the site has a high chance of, over time, being a gold mine of keywords. In other words, the longer the time is spent on updating the blog, the higher the chances of including the most important keywords. Again, this will make the blog and hence the website more visible to search engines.

- A person who takes the time out to blog about a particular good or service that is being provided by a website needs to know what he or she is talking about. People that come to visit the website can know after only a few lines, whether or not the blogger has an in-depth knowledge of the subject matter at hand. The longer the blog goes on, the more the blogger can consider him- or herself an expert on the topic. This makes the website appear more professional and lends it a higher credibility.3

- The higher the number of people visiting a website the higher the ranking. If a blog is interesting enough it can command a following. This constant traffic can be considered as a highly yielding hunting ground for potential customers. If the blogger is really smart, he or she can easily convert this traffic to sales. Also, here too the blogger can catch the ‘eyes’ of search engines by the amount of traffic rushing to the blogs.

- Lastly, the posts, if created on different web pages, can be used to link back to the main page. This helps in both converting the user to a visitor and ultimately a customer while also serving as a ranking booster for the page the links point to. Search engines love web pages that are so popular that there are lots of links pointing to them.

As can be seen above, having a blog is one of the most important steps that needs to be taken when considering Search Engine Optimization (SEO).